Dr Karan Singh & Alan Jacobs-Uncovering Our Greatness

This is a monthly column on uncovering our greatness, co-authored by Michael Thallium from Spain (who talks about a great human being from Eastern part of the world) and Dr Amit Nagpal from India (who talks about a great human being from Western part of the world). We aim to share the success stories of great human beings and wish to inspire the readers to uncover their greatness too.

To me the presentation of the
book The Seven Joys Of Life by Amit Nagpal was the introduction to a person I
had never heard of: Dr Karan Singh (www.karansingh.com).
I did not have the chance to travel to India for that presentation and meet
both my friend Amit Nagpal and Dr Karan Singh. I remember by that time, by the
beginning of August of this year 2012 which is finishing in a couple of hours,
I was in Kiev. When I came back to Spain, I started finding out about Dr Karan
Singh. I knew that if Amit had chosen him to present his book, there should be
a good reason. So, I watched a video entitled “I Believe” based on Karan
Singh’s life which I recommend you to have a look.
This Indian gentleman well known across the world, is a very versatile person: politician, statesman,
philosopher, spiritual leader...

I must admit that I could not
go very deep into his life and I know this article is just the beginning of an
exploration journey to Karan Singh’s world, but I would like to share a little
experience that happened to me a couple of months ago. I was researching on the
Internet about ethics and I came across The Declaration Toward a Global Ethic
of 1993 (http://www.global-ethic-now.de/gen-eng/0a_was-ist-weltethos/0a-03-capitel-3/0a-03-00-die-erklaerung.php).
Guess what? One of the signers was Karan Singh. I think if I would not have
learnt about Karan Singh through Amit Nagpal, I would have never paid much
attention to that declaration. Actually, Karan Singh is working for the world
interfaith or interreligion dialogue.

As I said at the beginning I
could not be in India for the presentation of "The Seven Joys Of Life". However,
there are other ways to be present, I mean, to be present in spirit. We all are somehow interconnected and
the proof of it is that, right now, while I am writing these lines, in
Móstoles, Spain, I am listening to the Classical Instrumental Violin by Indian
maestro Pandit V. G. Jog (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuFlYFI4ylw) about whom I learnt just a couple of
weeks ago from (thanks to her) my beloved friend Rachel Flowers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itdy6kVQ9uw),
who lives in California, USA, and has never been to India, but wanted this
music as her birthday present this year. Finally, these words will travel from
Spain to New Delhi and from there... who knows! Could you tell me please?

Alan Jacobs-Giving Western Touch to Indian MysticismLife is a Game with Rules; Meet The Exceptions

The book was
impressive and, so must be the author, I thought. I had just read “Aim for the Stars, Reach
the Moon” by Conor Patterson and was suitably impressed by its content. So I
started researching its acknowledgements and other trivia (we consider it
trivia, don’t we?). I found that Conor had written about a man called 'Alan Jacobs' (and had thanked him for his mentoring). The name ‘Alan Jacobs' sounded familiar and I
recollected reading it somewhere in the friend list of a Facebook friend.

So I quickly found him out, connected with him on Facebook and began to research more about him. The man
sounded weird at first, as he has been associated with diamond trade, professional life
coaching, Indian spirituality, Armed Forces and what not. It was early 2011 and I requested him to mentor me as an author and emailed him my first e-book, "Spiritual Tools for Material Success". A good feedback from him gave me the conviction in my work and my journey as an author began in the real sense of the term (Sometime we may need a validation more than mentoring).

Born in 1929
in London, Alan was interested in religion and mysticism from an early age. He
began his serious personal search for truth in his late twenties, and entered the
Gurdjieff Society in 1957. Later on he met Jiddu Krishnamurti, and went through
his teachings until 1979.Then he came across the sage Ramana Maharshi and currently Alan is the President of the Ramana Maharshi Foundation, UK. I love the enlightened whispers (or poetry), which Alan writes on his blog.

Alan Jacobs has
written (including edited/verified) more than 30 books and was educated at several
institutions including Irving School (USA), Coaching Academy, Regent Street
Polytechnic Dept. of Business Studies and the Tailor and Cutter Academy.

Alan's first
book was 'Dutch And Flemish 17th C Painters: A Collectors Guide for McGraw
Hill'. His latest book, a Utopian novella 'Eutopia: The Gnostic Land of Prestor
John' is based on agnostic principles of an emperor of Ethopia and describes the direct path to Self-realization popular in the kingdom.

When I saw this description as part of his author profile “He has been married three times, and has three children and five grandchildren”, I wondered whether we Indians would be able to include such a description in our profile. On the other hand I have seen couples suffering throughout their lives in India, but not gathering the courage to separate (it is changing fast with the new generation in metros though). Now Indians are also beginning to realise that the children of such marriages suffer rather than benefit because of the parents staying together.

So, if you are
ready for the self-realization journey, I recommend that you enter the mystical world of Alan Jacob’s
books.

(Though Alan
stays in London most of the time, he frequently travels to Ramanna Ashram,
Tiruvanamallai, India.)

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